Blake Wrote:Now that's my idea of funny. We had a whole bunch of those bouncy super balls in the gift shop at the time, and we'd freeze those, then watch them hit the ground with a "clack". We also used to freak people out by pouring it on our hands. You wouldn't want to cup it, of course, but if you just let it run off the back of your hand, the layer of evaporating nitrogen would insulate your skin from the stuff that was still liquid, and you'd be fine. Just no sustained contact!
Yeah, no sustained contact is right! I worked at a couple of places where we used a lot of LN2, and some of the pranks were hilarious . . . a few were dangerous. Most were of the using a banana for a hammer type, but once someone got the notion to freeze another guys wrench and put it on his bench while he wasn't looking. The guy picked it up and it stuck to his hand. A quick application of warm water and it came unstuck, but it could have hurt him.
Quote:This next one's a little tamer than some posted above (especially the BB one! Yowza!). My uncle used to live on a cul-de-sac in the late '70s and early '80s, and for July 4th he'd bring boxes and boxes of fireworks back from Mexico. One of the grand events of the evening was when he'd lay gun powder in a line from one side of the street to the other, then lay hundreds of firecrackers down with their fuses touching the powder. That was a fun one to see go off.
Blake
Was it black powder, or smokeless?
Contrary to what you see in the movies, black powder doesn't burn at a slow rate.
You've seen the scene in whatever generic western movie where the hero lays down a trail of black powder, leaves the keg at the end of it, goes back and lights the trail, and then has to run forward to rescue the girl, getting her out of peril and back to safety before the smoking trail of powder reaches the keg and blows up the bad guys.
It doesn't work that way! Black powder is an explosive. Smokeless powder is an accellerant. In other words, while smokeless burns relatively slowly in the open and fast when contained, black powder burns at pretty much the same rate either way. When he lights that trail of black powder, it's all over . . . RIGHT NOW! FssssstBOOM! Many's the time I've singed the hair on my arm demonstrating this. I always seem to have this weird idea that this time I can pull the match away fast enough. Some day I'm going to wise-up. But not yet . . . not yet.
Your Uncle sure sounds like a neat guy.
Ken V.